Defending the substance view against its critics.

Abstract

Recently, the substance view of persons has been heavily criticized for the counterintuitive conclusions it seems to imply in scenarios such as embryo rescue cases and embryo loss. These criticisms have obscured the considerable success of the substance view in supporting other intuitions that are widely shared, and that competing accounts such as the psychological view have difficulties accounting for. Here, I examine common intuitions regarding identity, human exceptionalism, the moral equality of children and adults, infanticide, and prenatal injury. I conclude that when we broaden the range of intuitions examined, the substance view emerges as just as plausible an account of our nature as the more widely accepted psychological view.